About Becky

I publish under the name Rebecca Allen, but most people know me as Becky. Here is some irrelevant information that nobody would ever need to know about me:

The hospital I was born in was here (closed in 1985), but I left south London at the age of 3 and doubt I’ll ever go back.

My little girl was one of 58 English babies named Juliet born in 2010. I’m pretty sure none of the other 57 share her middle name.

Our boy was not named after the then leader of Labour Party. We did think about giving him the middle name Omov to reflect political events in the week of his birth though.

I took the EBacc, before it even existed! Subjects I would have liked to have studied to 16 if we didn’t force such a narrow curriculum on students: geography, D&T, religious studies.

I studied maths and science A levels without much difficulty, despite not taking ‘triple sciences’ at GCSE. Subjects I would have liked to have studied to 18 if we didn’t force such a narrow curriculum on students: German, history, music, biology.

Doing educational research is my third career, after investment banking and teaching. It took me a few tries to realise that I’m happiest when I have a few hours each day shut away without human contact.

I hated statistics/econometrics at school and during my first degree. Now I love nothing more than data-crunching in Stata. This probably says something about me or about education in general, but I’m not sure what.